The Retro/Vintage Scan Emporium: “The Business of America is Business” (illustrations from a 1960’s business text book)

A Journey Round My Skull: #21, Russian elementary school textbook on The Miracle of Life, 1992

Nice : an allegory of the RGB color model.

Previously on Skandalon

This is Niemann’s latest instalment published on his New York Times’ blog Abstract City :

“Christoph Niemann’s illustrations have appeared on the covers of The New Yorker, Newsweek, Wired, The New York Times Magazine and American Illustration. His work has won numerous awards from the American Institute of Graphic Arts, the Art Directors Club and American Illustration.”

Previously on Skandalon: Christoph Niemann, maps.

“Zachary Kanin (5’3), was the shortest ever President of the Harvard Lampoon. His cartoons and humor writing have appeared in The New Yorker, where he worked until recently. He is the author and illustrator of The Short Book, which is available in stores and online now. He has written for the children’s show Thumb Wrestling Federation, and was a contributing joke writer for Phil Angelides’ campaign for governor of California.” (The Huffington Post)

Kanin have a blog but it hasn’t been updated since June 30, 2008.

“All my favourite buildings in the Mile End neighbourhood of Montreal. Orginally commissioned by Drawn & Quarterly for their bookbags.”

Matt Forsythe is “an illustrator and comic-book artist from Montreal, Canada”. Visit his official website: www.comingupforair.net

About Roz Chast:

“Rosalind “Roz” Chast (born November 26, 1954) is an American cartoonist and a staff cartoonist for The New Yorker. She grew up in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, the only child of an assistant principal and a high school teacher who subscribed to The New Yorker. Her earliest cartoons were published in Christopher Street and the The Village Voice. In 1978 The New Yorker accepted one of her cartoons and has since published more than 800. She also publishes cartoons in Scientific American and the Harvard Business Review. (wikipedia)

Image above taken from the Boobytraps series (2008):

“The last series, Boobytraps, is not photographic in nature, but has every thing to do with spread ing ter ror and cre at ing an atmosphere of invisible menace that sur­rounds us everywhere and could hit any of us any time. Taken from two US Army field manuals they show soldiers how to construct boobytraps out of literally every­thing available in the world of every day objects, including pipes, beds, couches and chocolates.” (read more)

Artist’s statement about his Boobytraps series:

“I have taken these images from two books “Boobytraps” (1965) and “Unconventional Warfare Devices and Techniques - References” (1966). These are two “Army Field Manuals” of the US Army. In these books, soldiers are taught to construct boobytraps out of literally everything available. The key point of these two books is not how to detect these exploding traps but how to construct them.

The basic idea of building a trap out of - let´s say - a tea kettle is to spread terror. If a simple tea kettle might be a bomb that could kill or maim me what is there left to trust. Everything might be a bomb and therefore, in the head of the potential victim,everything IS a trap.”

See the whole Boobytraps series. The complete catalog can be dowloaded in PDF (Texts German, 3.12MB). Here is Simon Menner official website.

About Mr. Deane:

“Mrs. Deane is a blog run by Beierle + Keijser, visual artists from respectively Ger­many and Holland. It is named in after a spiritistic medium from the beginning of the 20th century. For us, Mrs. Deane stands for the ambiguous and the undecidable that one finds one selfconfronted with near the borders of the perceptible and the prob­able. Here, every man has to decide for him self what he holds to be true and what not.” (read more)

Jason Levesque is a “drawler, designer, do’er of stunts” from Norfolk, VA. USA. Check more of his illustrations, visit his blog.

Travis W. Simon “Cat Dog”